DRAMS and many other integrated circuits require a negative NMOS substrate voltage. A negative NMOS substrate voltage lowers the junction capacitance of NMOS transistors, prevents forward biasing of p-n junctions and improves the isolation of DRAM storage cells by increasing the threshold voltage of the thickfield transistors.
A negative substrate bias is achieved by using a capacitor to pump the substrate negative through a MOS diode. A typical substrate pump can be seen in FIG. 1. .PHI.1 and .PHI.2 are 180.degree. out of phase clock signals that oscillate between Vdd and Vss. When .PHI.1 is at Vdd, .PHI.2 is at Vss and node N1 is precharged to Vss through PMOS transistor D1. When .PHI.1 goes from Vdd to Vss node N1 is booted to a negative potential and its charge is transferred to the substrate through PMOS transistor D1. Node N1 going negative precharges node N2 to Vss through PMOS transistor D3. Thus we have a two phase substrate biasing pump. The substrate voltage is limited to -Vdd+.vertline.Vtp.vertline., where Vtp is the threshold voltage of the PMOS diode. It can be seen that the substrate voltage is dependent upon the voltage supply Vdd.
A problem may develop when Vdd slews from a higher voltage to a lower voltage and the substrate has no discharge path to enable it to become less negatively biased. When this happens, the threshold voltages of the integrated circuits NMOS transistors are too large for optimal operation of the circuitry due to the body effect on the threshold voltages. A circuit that overcomes this problem by causing the substrate voltage to become more shallow (less negative) during slew conditions is shown in FIG. 2.
The circuit of FIG. 2 operates by comparing the negative voltage of node N1 to node N3. When the voltage on node N1 is a high voltage, the voltage on node N2 is a low voltage so NMOS transistor T1 is off and the voltage on node N3 remains the same. When the voltage on node N1 is low, the voltage on node N2 is high so node N1's low voltage is then passed to node N3. Therefore, if node N1's low voltage becomes an NMOS threshold voltage (Vtn) above Vbb (substrate voltage), NMOS transistor T2 turns on and Vbb becomes more shallow until node N1's low voltage is .ltoreq.Vbb+Vtn. Since Vbb.gtoreq.-Vdd+.vertline.Vtp.vertline., Vdd must slew down by at least .vertline.Vtp.vertline.+Vtn for this circuit to be effective.
A major problem with circuits that have nodes at negative voltages is the risk of forward biasing the pn junctions in the NMOS transistors. If the drain or source of an NMOS transistor, shown in FIG. 3, gets a Vtpn (the turn on voltage of a pn junction diode) below Vbb, the diode becomes conductive and electrons are injected from the more heavily doped n-type source/drain area into the more lightly doped p-type substrate. Electrons injected into the more lightly doped p-type substrate travel freely until they either recombine in the substrate or are collected by a more positively charged region such as a DRAM storage cell. These injected electrons can cause DRAM storage cells to lose a true "1" stored in them if the number of injected electrons collected by a storage cell is large enough.
Node N1 in FIG. 2 is one such problematic injection node. The node voltage oscillates between ground and Vbb-.vertline.Vtp.vertline. causing the p-n diode from the source to the substrate of transistor T1 to become forward biased since Vbb is typically no deeper than (-Vdd)+.vertline.Vtp.vertline.. This result is undesirable. What is needed is a circuit that performs this same slew function without the risk of electron injection.